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He wasn’t healed enough, yet. And though it gratified her that he so obviously wanted her—that both men breathed hard in her ears with desire—she could not live with herself if she ever did Malcolm harm.
He wasn’t healed enough yet for riding a horse, much less riding a woman.
He needed his strength, and she would not take it from him.
“Enough,” she whispered, regretfully. “Enough.”
They stopped. Both of them. As if she’d uttered a magic spell. And the power they had given her over them, and over herself, was so heady she wondered a moment if she truly was a witch.
“Is something wrong?” Davy asked, panting near her ear.
“Nothing whatsoever,” she said, her voice dreamy and far away. “It is only that I’m frightened.” Frightened that the injured man would open his sutures and start to bleed again, she meant. Frightened that he would endure pain for her part. But she could see the two men didn’t take it that way.
“You mustn’t be afraid,” Malcolm said.
Davy insisted, “We wouldn’t hurt you, lass. Only give you pleasure.”
“Even the first time?” Arabella asked. “I’m told—I’ve heard…”
Davy, who had claimed never to have had a virgin girl, shrugged helplessly. It was Malcolm, who had been a husband, who nodded. “Och, aye. There is pain the first time. But it fades quickly and turns to sweetness.”
She wasn’t afraid of the pain of breaking her maidenhead. Given the way the men made her feel, she didn’t doubt Malcolm in the slightest when he said it would fade quickly to sweetness. She wanted that sweetness, truly she did. But she was sure he was already in pain, and that it was not sweet at all.
“I’d like some time to muster my courage,” she said. “If—if that would not enrage you both too much.”
Davy laughed. “Aye, right. It’s rage I feel swelling in my balls. Lass, any man who wouldn’t wait for you to muster your courage is a man without any of his own.”
She felt something for him then. Something well beyond the heat of lust. And then felt it again when Malcolm nodded solemnly, rolling onto to his back. She hated to let them withdraw from her, but it was the right decision.
Malcolm said, “Put my claymore in the bed. Down the middle, to keep us separate and guard her virtue.”
The virtue she wanted so badly to surrender? No, she thought. It’s his virtue he wants to guard. For no matter how warmly she felt for Malcolm, she knew one thing for a certain. He might want her. He might kiss her. He might finger her most intimate places and plot to couple with her in carnal bliss.
But he didn’t want to hold her; not as a man holds a woman he loves.
And he clearly feared that he might.
~~~
She slept so long the next morning, she didn’t hear the rooster crow. Or perhaps it was that she couldn’t hear the rooster crow, considering the world was quiet and blanketed with snow.
Malcolm rose gingerly from his pillow, testing his leg. Though he hissed to put pressure upon it, the pain no longer put him flat on his back when he tried. He cursed, then cursed again, more colorfully. But he was no longer a pale and desiccated husk of himself. He was strong. He would recover. And because he hadn’t yet seen the snowfall at the door, he said, “Let’s be up and on the trail. If you can get me into a saddle, I can ride. Tie me onto the creature if need be, but we can’t stay here another minute.”
Davy snorted. “Have you taken a peek outside?”
The storm had continued all night, melting a bit then freezing again to treacherous ice, a hardened drift blocking the door to the cottage almost to the height of Davy’s belly. “Even if we dug our way out, the horses will never be able to manage it. Especially not carrying a giant like you and that dagger of yours.”
He meant the claymore, which Malcolm touched with almost as much affection as he might touch a woman. “But I’m better now,” Malcolm insisted. “Fit as a fiddle.”
That might be overstating it; he wasn’t fully healed. Which made Arabella glad that she had not let him exert himself the night before.
Still, he complained, “Are we to sit about and do nothing while the castle might be under siege?”
“They wouldn’t lay siege in a snow storm,” Davy said, then shook his head. “Likely, the enemy is as trapped as we are.” Then he shot Arabella a wicked, toothy smile. “So in the meanwhile, how are we to entertain ourselves?”
“By making breakfast,” she said, suppressing a grin.
“I’ll do it,” Davy said, swiftly. “After all, I make a passable porridge, whereas you…”
